Aspects of the present disclosure relate generally to wireless communication systems, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for improving the utilization of processing resources during compression of packetized data flows, thereby providing consistent service in a wireless communication system.
Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as telephony, video, data, messaging, broadcasts, and so on. Such networks, which are usually multiple access networks, support communications for multiple users by sharing the available network resources. One example of such a network is the UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN). The UTRAN is the radio access network (RAN) defined as a part of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), a third generation (3G) mobile phone technology supported by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). The UMTS, which is the successor to Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) technologies, currently supports various air interface standards, such as Wideband-Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA), Time Division-Code Division Multiple Access (TD-CDMA), and Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA). The UMTS also supports enhanced 3G data communications protocols, such as High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), which provides higher data transfer speeds and capacity to associated UMTS networks.
In some wireless communications systems, a compressor may compress data packets by utilizing a compression algorithm. In some cases, however, the compressor may attempt to compress data packets from certain flows that may not be compressible or that may provide little or no gain (e.g., reduction in packet size) from compression, thereby wasting processing resources.
Thus, improving the utilization of processing resources during compression of packet data flows is desired.